Increase in aurora correlates with an increase in energetic particles getting inside the inner solar system and making it into our atmosphere. The normal cause of aurora are geomagnetic storms caused by a CME and yet there have been MANY such aurora displays during the deep minimum where there were no CMEs or any sort of activity from the sun to cause them.

When the ejection is directed towards the Earth and reaches it as an interplanetary CME (ICME), the shock wave of the traveling mass of Solar Energetic Particles causes a geomagnetic storm that may disrupt the Earth's magnetosphere, compressing it on the day side and extending the night-side magnetic tail. When the magnetosphere reconnects on the nightside, it releases power on the order of terawatt scale, which is directed back toward the Earth's upper atmosphere.

This process can cause particularly strong auroras in large regions around Earth's magnetic poles. These are also known as the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) in the northern hemisphere, and the Southern Lights (aurora australis) in the southern hemisphere.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae) is a natural light display in the sky, particularly in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions, caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere (thermosphere). The charged particles originate in the magnetosphere and solar wind and are directed by the Earth's magnetic field into the atmosphere.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]